Numlock News: October 26, 2026 • Hemoglobin, Clayface, Elvis

Oct 26, 2026

By Walt Hickey

Welcome back!

Malleable

Clayface won the box office weekend with $24 million in North America, beating out the documentary You Can See Everything with a nevertheless remarkable $19.5 million in its second weekend, a 28 percent jump. Clayface came in a bit soft compared to expectations, and pulled $19 million overseas. Stop-motion animated film Wildwood from Laika Studios pulled off $11.2 million in its opening weekend, smashing expectations, which is remarkable because its core demographic — sensitive men who write stats-driven morning newsletters — were traveling back from London this weekend and won’t be able to see it until later this week.

Rebecca Rubin, Variety

Winnie-the-Pooh

The New York Public Library is pushing back on rumors that it will return the collection of stuffed animals owned by A. A. Milne’s son Christopher Robin that inspired the beloved children’s book series featuring Winnie-the-Pooh. Obviously, these artifacts have played an important role in British culture, but the NYPL has to be realistic about these assets, which were donated by publisher Dutton Children’s Books to the library in 1987 in a deal that everyone agrees was completely legal at the time. Straightforwardly, the toys were acquired above board, and arguably they were rescued from destruction; the toys in the possession of the NYPL are certainly in better condition than any of the same toys bought from Harrod’s in 1921. The NYPL is designed to be a global institution with artifacts from many different cultures, and fulfilling all restitution claims for all the great museums would be ruinous. The NYPL attracts millions of visitors per year, and owning them allows Pooh Bear to be viewed in the context of other great children’s books rather than an isolated display. Also, come on, if we’d ever consider loaning them back, Britain would really have to get its fiscal house in order, and perhaps the regional unrest would need to quiet down a bit.

Hallie Golden, The Associated Press

A Little Less Conversation, A Little More Action

The owners of Elvis Presley’s music have sued Anthropic, alleging that the company infringed on 274 of Elvis’ copyrighted songs. The suit was launched by a unit of Authentic Brands Group, which is a licensing company that controls the intellectual property rights of Elvis, though the suit was co-filed by other entities that have skin in the game on the songs of the King.

Bill Donahue, Billboard

Hoover

The works of Colleen Hoover have been colossal successes within the book business, and have had solid performance on the big screen as well. So far, production company Heartbones Entertainment has adapted three of Hoover’s novels, with It Ends With Us making $351 million on a $25 million budget, Verity, which made $122 million and Verity. The movies in turn drive sales back to the books, too; Verity has sold 4.7 million copies since its 2021 release, and It Ends with Us has sold six million print copies.

Kerensa Cadenas, Publishers Weekly

Death

Japanese funerary rites involve cremation and burial, with the overwhelming number of Japanese decedents electing to be cremated: between 99.7 percent and 99.9 percent in a given year. Indeed, fewer than 400 people are buried without cremation annually. However, the country is facing a crisis related to the cost of burial, with funerals averaging 1.2 million yen (US$7,600), as of 2024, which is about a quarter of the average annual gross earnings of a Japanese worker. Plot and cemetery-use fees are expensive, amounting to 1.52 million yen in 2025, and even after the funeral, municipal and private cemeteries charge annual fees for land maintenance.

Mimi Hanaoka, The Conversation

El Niño

A new study published in Science Advances found that the state of the Pacific Ocean at the outset of a forecast may allow the possibility of predicting an El Niño or La Niña event up to a year in advance. Currently, these events can be predicted with confidence about six months ahead of time. However, any earlier prediction has been relatively elusive. The researchers analyzed 7,500 historical El Niño-Southern Oscillation forecasts and found that under La Niña conditions, forecasts performed consistently well.

Alexa Viani, University of Melbourne

Hemoglobin

Blood can take a number of different colors, colors that are the result of different adaptations in blood chemistry to support survival in unique conditions. For the most part, vertebrates have rich red blood thanks to the hemoglobin protein in red blood cells that contains iron atoms. Vertebrate blood is cherry red when the iron atoms attach to oxygen and brown-red when they’re not. The deer mouse, which can live 14,000 feet above sea level, has evolved hemoglobin that makes particularly tight bonds with oxygen, with similar alterations found in Andean hummingbirds and black-spotted frogs. Not all animal blood is red, though; Octopus and squid instead have hemocyanin, which has copper atoms rather than iron, so it looks blue when bound to oxygen, performing better in cold temperatures.

Claudia Steiner, Knowable Magazine

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Numlock News is written each day by Walt Hickey. Email me with numbers, tips or feedback at walt@numlock.news. Every post is entirely by a human; send corrections or typos to the copy desk at copy@numlock.news. If you enjoy Numlock, tell a friend, word of mouth is the only way that independent publications like this one grow.

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